Confectionery products, including chewing gum products, having a core covered by a layer have achieved significant market success. Consumers value the feel and appearance of a hard coated chewable product, which may, depending on the manner in which it is made, produce a desirable crunchy sensation when chewed. Commercial chewing gum products of this type include Chiclets®, Dentyne® and Eclipse®. Such hard coated products include chewing gums, lozenges, tablet-type confections, and the like.
The production of hard coated crunchy confectionery products has become standardized over the years. One common mode of production is a conventional hard panning procedure. The hard coating is generally built up around an edible core by a repetitive process of spraying a coating material on the core in a rotating drum, followed by drying at elevated temperatures. The coated product is then placed in a conditioning facility where latent moisture evaporates under room temperature, low humidity conditions. In order to achieve the desirable crunchy hard coating, many layers of the coating material (e.g., 40-60 layers) must be applied. A multilayered coated product produced in this manner is shown in the photomicrograph identified herein as FIG. 1.
The coating material used to produce hard pan crunchy coatings is typically a saturated solution of a bulk sweetener, often referred to as “a sugar syrup.” The sugar syrup is a saturated solution of the coating material so that upon loss of water, the coating material, particularly the bulk sweetener, crystallizes to form a hard, crunchy layer.
The application of a single thin layer of coating material, and its subsequent drying to form a thin crystallized layer of the coating material is typically performed in 7 to 8 minutes to allow crystallization to become complete and to form a smooth, crunchy coating layer.
It is often necessary to apply 40 to 60 thin individual layers of the coating material to the core in order to provide a commercially acceptable hard crunchy coating, as observed in FIG. 1. With an average cycle time of 7 to 8 minutes, the coating process often takes six hours or more to complete.
There is, therefore, a need in the art of producing confectionery products, including chewing gums, to provide a product in less time without sacrificing the desirable qualities of the product.
The present invention departs from the conventional wisdom of applying numerous thin layers by employing a layering material that is not a traditional “sugar syrup”. In particular, a dough-like confectionery material is used in which a solid particulate in the form of granules, powders, aggregates, crystals, non-crystalline solids, and mixtures thereof (e.g., sugar or sugar alcohol) is surrounded by a liquid phase and is not dissolved in a relatively large amount of liquid (e.g. water) to form a saturated solution. The present invention provides an alternative to the use of high water content solutions for producing coating materials capable of being processed into confectionery products including those having crunch characteristics. Instead, the present invention employs a layering material in the form of a dough-like confectionery material, as hereinafter defined having a low water content. The liquid phase includes a liquid and a diffusion controller that controls the diffusion of the liquid and its contact with the solid particulates. The dough-like confectionery material is viscous so that the confectionery material can be applied, optionally under pressure, to form a desirable product in a range of physical conditions extending from hard to soft and non-crunchy to crunchy in as little as a single application.